Singing with a passion and fervor directly influenced by the classic soul heroes, JJ Grey has written and recorded five albums of original songs steeped in the rhythm & blues, rock, and country soul of his native backwoods home outside Jacksonville, Florida. Grey comes from a long tradition of Southern storytellers and, in that spirit, he fills his songs with details that are at once vivid, personal and universal. After a decade of hard touring, he still spends eight months of the year on the road, bringing his music to a loyal, ever-growing, worldwide fanbase.

In a live performance review in The New York Times, writer Nate Chinen praised JJ's "balance of wildness and cool" describing his music as "Southern swamp rock with undercurrents of Memphis soul. His songs chronicle ambiguous truths and unambiguous urges," delivered by Grey's "winningly uncontrived vocals." Likewise, Billboard has praised Grey’s "world-beating blend of Southern rock, blues and Florida swamp soul."

2010 sees the Alligator Records release of Grey’s latest labor of love, Georgia Warhorse, named after the resilient Southern lubber grasshopper. "Yellow and black, and tough like an old-school Tonka toy," says JJ. "They seem so at ease with the world. Nothing seems to rile them. They’re in no hurry but they have a kind of resilience because they just keep coming back and I’ve always felt there was a lesson in there for me to learn." Grey could be described in such words; his own career has grown over the course of a decade of winning over fans night after night.

About Jonathan Tyler & Northern Lights:

Contrary to doomsayer rumor, rock music doesn’t need saving. But a wake-up call is long overdue, and this is it. Actually, not just a wake-up call, but a joyous reunion of rock with its oft-forgotten prodigal twin, the roll — with papa blues and mama soul along for the ride, too. All of which makes Pardon Me the perfect introduction to one of the most electrifying young bands in America — or at least the next best thing to experiencing Jonathan Tyler and the Northern Lights live. Literally.

Don’t be fooled by the good Southern manners implied by the title of Pardon Me, the major-label debut by Dallas’ Jonathan Tyler and the Northern Lights. The walloping roundhouse punch of Pardon Me’s lead-off title track and everything else packed into Tyler and Co.’s Texas-sized can of rock ’n’ roll whoopass. “Hey!” Tyler shouts after the opening salvo of guitars lands like a gauntlet slap across the face. “Can you hear me? Can you feel me, coming through your stereo?” Then comes the coup-de-grace, a shot of Hendrix-laced adrenaline plunged deep into the listener’s heart and soul by a diabolically persuasive Dr. Feelgood. “Maybe it’s been too long since rock ’n’ roll turned you on,” sneers Tyler, with equal measures of promise and threat. “So pardon me, just let it set you free.”